opposite of their intended aims. Mechanisms designed to increase motivation can dampen it. Tactics aimed at boosting creativity can reduce it. Programs to promote good deeds can make them disappear. Meanwhile, instead of restraining negative behavior, rewards and punishments can often set it loose—and
give rise to cheating, addiction, and dangerously myopic thinking.
This is weird. And it doesn’t hold in all circumstances (about which more after this chapter. But as Edward Deci’s Soma puzzle experiment demonstrates,
many practices whose effectiveness we take for granted produce counterintuitive results They can give us less of what we want—and more of what we don’t want. These are the bugs in Motivation 2.0. And they rise to the surface whether we’re
promising rupees in India, charging shekels in Israel, drawing blood in
Sweden, or painting portraits in Chicago.
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